such a peculiarly solitary being that his poems have so much to teach us. There are pleasures, forms of nourishment perhaps, that most people know and that he did not. What he knew about was the place that the need for that nourishment came from. And he knew how immensely difficult it is for us to inhabit that place, to be anything other than strangers to our own existence. To learn not to be a stranger is the burden of the Duino Elegies. It is what causes him, at the end of “Requiem,” to take

(Paris, July 1914) Ptah-hotep: A high official under the pharaoh Asosi, during the Fifth Dynasty (ca. 2600 B.C.). To Hölderlin (Irschenhausen, September 1914) Hölderlin: Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), one of the greatest German poets. During the past few months I have been reading your edition of Hölderlin with extraordinary feeling and devotion. His influence upon me is great and generous, as only the influence of the richest and inwardly mightiest can be.… I cannot tell